


Whatever happened to John's heart

by flowerplots



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Christmas fic, Gen, Post-Reichenbach, angsty, turns out snow doesn't always inspire fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerplots/pseuds/flowerplots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you measured the temperature of John's heart, it would be lower than zero degrees on the Kelvin scale.</p><p>John hasn't been warm in a very long time.<br/>He doesn't care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Immotus

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a fluffy christmas fic and somehow it turned into this.  
> This is not fluffy at all.  
> It is sad.

A snowflake lands on John's left hand. Looking up, he can see the white flakes flutter down towards him, landing on his hair, his shoulders, his hands, his feet. His cane. He does not want to move. The snow is cold, but that doesn't really matter. John hasn't been warm in a very long time.

It's been over three years and his heart still hasn't recovered. John doesn't even try to crack the block of ice that has frozen his heart, because what's the point? Sure, others have tried to melt it, with sweet smiles, careful hugs, kisses on his cheek, warm words and friendly claps on his shoulder, but there is only one smile he wants to see, only one body whose heat could melt the ice around his heart, and that body is not warm any more.

"It's probably cold in a coffin six feet under ground", John thinks, and then he remembers that corpses don't care if they're cold. That's why he's standing here in the winter cold, still and unmoving. He's just as dead as that body buried under frozen earth, and his heart doesn't beat any stronger than his friend's unbeating heart, stopped by cold concrete and vicious rumours.

Machines don't have hearts, but it turns out some machines are human and have hearts that are very stoppable indeed.

A black car stops close to him, a door opening, a worried face, and the British government says: "Dr Watson. Please.", and it almost sounds like the government is, sad, somehow. But that's impossible. Governments don't have feelings. They only have goals and empty faces, and the unscrupulousness to leave behind the bodies that need to be offered to the gods of power and the hunger for everything, becoming puppets to those gods on the way.

John doesn't want anything to do with the puppets. He might be dead, but at least he was alive once. Puppets are made from paper and blood, and they have no heart at all, frozen or not.

The door closes, and the car slowly drives away into the foggy winter night.

John doesn't move.


	2. Immobilis

He has been out here for exactly 1 hour and 19 minutes. After Sherlock's death, he started counting his minutes everywhere he went. In the beginning he did it because it somehow managed to distract him from a reality without Sherlock, even if it was just for a few seconds, now he just can't stop. He keeps counting because he needs to know, needs to know how many seconds it takes him to find the TV remote, how many minutes he spends on the tube, how many hours he's been standing in the cold snow; he has to know so he can add it up later to _how much time without Sherlock._  
  
The answer always remains the same. Too much. Too long.

The door to 221 Baker Street opens, and a woman sighs. A warm hand touches his shoulder, trying to beckon him inside, "John, please, you can't stay out here all night, you'll catch a cold!"

John thinks that's a bit ironic. He doesn't care if he catches a cold. A cold is nothing compared to _the_ cold, the iciness inside him. He's so cold inside that he thinks not even zero degrees on the Kelvin scale would cover it (and wouldn't Sherlock be proud of him for knowing about the Kelvin scale. And wouldn't he be appalled at his unscientific use of it.)  
Really, the snow should be warming him up.  
It doesn't feel warm though.

It doesn't feel cold either.

It's just there. Like everything else. People, words, colours, smiles. Snow. All of it could vanish in a second's time, and John would barely take notice. As far as he's concerned, he's already living in an empty world, people or not. After the war, the difference between empty and full was made by Sherlock, and Sherlock is gone, ergo John's world is empty. If you take away all pluses ( _Sherlock, love, happiness_ ) and all minuses ( _Moriarty, hate, anger_ ) in John's life, maths dictates that you obtain a zero. 

That's what John's world is now. A zero-world. He has counted 181 weeks, 2 days, 8 hours and 32 minutes without Sherlock, and somehow they all add up to zero.

After a bit, Mrs. Hudson abandons him with another sad sigh and goes back inside. She's been sighing a lot in the last few years, and if there's any reason why he'd try to leave his zero-world, why he'd like to get warm again, it would be her. But John doesn't know how, and he doesn't want to feel the pain that comes with warming up a frozen heart.

When he was a kid, he once got lost on a camping trip with his dad, and by the time they found him he was shivering and freezing, and when they rushed him inside, covering him with blankets, rubbing his back, blowing warm breath on his hands, he could feel his whole body coming back to life, and it was like needles pricking his body, a painful tingle all over his skin, and John doesn't want to imagine the agony of experiencing those sharp needles puncturing his heart, like wrapping barbed wire around it. He prefers to stay the way he is.

He's fine.

He just doesn't know how to be warm anymore.

He doesn't care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please let me know if you notice any grammar/language etcetera problems :)


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